The present invention relates to a processor for processing measured process information suitable for achieving a computer management or control of complicated processes such as a thermal process in an iron manufacturing furnace or a chemical reaction process in a chemical plant.
Furthermore, the present invention relates to an image information processing system suitable for a monitor system employing an industrial television (ITV), a visual system of a robot moving in an autonomic fashion, various measuring devices utilizing images, and recognition of graphics, characters, etc.
In many industrial manufacturing processes, a system measuring and controlling states of the system have been broadly adopted. In a typical system, for example, the PID control is achieved by use of a deviation between a state of a process and a target value thereof or an application method of an artificial or man-created intelligence in which rules of "if . . . then . . . " are applied to a quantity of a state of a process so as to attain a control quantity through an inference. In these control appartuses, the signal processing of measured process information has been limited to an arithmetic processing of instantaneous items of measured data such as a removal of a noise from measured data and a conversion of the measured data into physically significant numeric value.
Furthermore, a monitor device for processing an image attained from an image input unit such as an ITV so as to decide the presence or absence of an invading object, a system for extracting, from an image, information related to a distance and an image of a moving object, and an equipment for recognizing characters and graphics have been put into practice. The typical processing in an image processing apparatus employed in such a device is limited to the arithmetic processing to extract an edge, which will be described later, and to effect arithmetic processing by use of the edge. Namely, in the processing, for example, a portion or an edge where a brightness abruptly varies is extracted from the image to determine the presence or absence of an object based on a position of the edge and to attain a speed of a moving object from a change of the edge. In consequence, in order to recognize an image, a complicated processing has been necessary in which a histogram indicating a distribution of edges is generated to achieve a statistical processing or in which connective relationships between certain pixels associated with edges are sequentially checked to extract line segments so as to determine a direction of the line segments.
In the signal processing apparatus of the conventional technology, there has been a first problem that although the instantaneous state of measured data can be attained, it is difficult to represent a time-series change pattern thereof. The consequence, in the conventional technology, a stabilizing control can be achieved to overcome various disturbances in stationary process states occupying most part of the operation period; however, a nonstationary state or a sudden abnormality cannot be easily coped with and a control operation for the restoration is attended with difficulties. The operation of this kind has been manually conducted by the human operator.
On the other hand, in the image information processing apparatus of the conventional technology, there has been a second problem that although the positions of the edges can be attained, the contour formed with the edges cannot be easily expressed. In consequence, in the conventional image information processing apparatus, although a contour of an object can be extracted, recognition of the extracted object has remained a more difficult problem to solve.